Kyiv mayor calls for city evacuation after heating cut off due to shelling

In a dangerous field and humanitarian development reflecting the severity of the escalation in the ongoing war, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, made an urgent appeal to the city’s residents, calling on them to temporarily leave, following intensive Russian attacks targeting the energy infrastructure, which led to the interruption of vital heating services to large parts of the capital.

Heating services collapse amid a harsh winter

In official statements on social media, Klitschko confirmed that recent Russian airstrikes have caused significant damage to the public utilities network, noting that "half of Kyiv's residential buildings, approximately 6,000, are currently without heating." This comes at a particularly critical time, as Ukraine is experiencing a severe cold wave, with temperatures expected to plummet to -8 degrees Celsius, making staying indoors without heating a real threat to residents' lives.

The mayor appealed to citizens who have the ability and resources to leave to head to other areas where alternative and stable sources of energy and heating are available, in an effort to relieve pressure on the damaged network and protect lives from the risk of freezing.

Infrastructure targeting strategy: Energy warfare

This event is not isolated from the context of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. Since the fall of 2022, Russian forces have pursued a military strategy focused intensively on targeting energy facilities, power transformers, and central heating stations in Ukraine. This strategy, which military experts describe as "winter warfare," aims to weaken the Ukrainian home front and demoralize the population by depriving them of basic necessities such as light, heat, and water, thus turning winter into an effective weapon of war.

Humanitarian repercussions and fears of new waves of displacement

This escalation has alarming humanitarian consequences at both the local and regional levels. Locally, the lack of heating presents Ukrainian authorities with enormous logistical challenges in providing "resilience points" (shelters equipped with generators and heating), but the scale of the recent destruction may exceed the capacity of these centers. Regionally, the continued targeting of infrastructure could trigger new waves of displacement towards Ukraine's western borders and into EU countries, bringing the refugee crisis back to the forefront.

Ukraine is striving to repair the damage at record speed, relying on international support and energy equipment provided by Western allies, but the repeated shelling makes maintaining the stability of the network a daily battle no less fierce than the battles raging on the military fronts.